Importing sub-tasks into an existing Parent

[Collin Willis]

Hi, I'm trying to import a bunch of sub-tasks and heve them show in an existing parent ticket. After reading a bunch of notes and answers here I manged to get something to happen but

After fiddling with the fields on the input I managed to get the importer to work assigning the "Issue Type" to the "Work Type", the "Parent" to the "Work Item ID" and the "Parent Key" to the "Parent". But for some unknown reason, the importer only created and linked one sub-task. The log shows it went through the right number of records (9), but for some reason linked the same "Work Item" each time. See the log entries below. As I'm trying to import a bunch of sub-tasks there is no Work Item ID for each of the new subtasks so JIRA must have created the LSS-6048 for the first item imported, and was able to link that, but the rest of them were orphaned even though all the records had the Parent ID set.

2025-11-11 17:39:10,122 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:10,122 INFO - Importing: Work Items
2025-11-11 17:39:10,122 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:10,122 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2025-11-11 17:39:10,812 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems1.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:12,082 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems2.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:12,850 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems3.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:13,580 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems4.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:14,334 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems5.com]
2025-11-11 17:39:15,129 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems6.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:15,851 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems7.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:16,558 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems8.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:17,257 INFO - Importing work item: [externalId='129204', summary='Set UFW to Active for systems9.com']
2025-11-11 17:39:18,067 INFO - 9 work items successfully created
2025-11-11 17:39:18,067 INFO - 0 out of 9 work items successfully updated
2025-11-11 17:39:18,075 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:18,075 INFO - Finished Importing : Work Items
2025-11-11 17:39:18,075 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:18,181 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:18,181 INFO - Importing: Work item 
2025-11-11 17:39:18,181 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:18,181 INFO - Only new items will be imported
2025-11-11 17:39:18,199 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:18,813 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:18,826 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:19,126 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:19,140 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:19,422 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:19,434 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:19,759 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:19,772 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:20,054 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:20,068 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:20,408 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:20,422 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:20,708 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:20,723 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:21,073 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:21,088 INFO - Linking 'LSS-6048' and 'LSS-6012' as sub-task-link
2025-11-11 17:39:21,370 INFO - Created parent-child (sub-task) relationship between LSS-6048 and LSS-6012
2025-11-11 17:39:21,380 INFO - ------------------------------
2025-11-11 17:39:21,380 INFO - Finished Importing : Work item 
2025-11-11 17:39:21,380 INFO - ------------------------------

[Harpreet]

Hello @Collin Willis 

Welcome to the community...!

Did you refer this KB -> Keep work parent-child relationships during CSV import to Jira Cloud 

Hope this helps.

Regards
Harpreet Walia 

[John Funk]

Hi Collin,

All you need is something simple like below where the Parent is the existing key of the parent you want to create the sub-task under. And yes, the terminology has changed to use work type instead of issue type and so on, but there is still a mixture of terms behinds the scenes in some places.